To say life returned to normal in Konoha after the war ended was a strange notion.

"My mom and dad are coming home!"

"I heard the hokage is retiring."

"I really have to clean my room before my parents get back…"

"My parents aren't coming back..."

It was huge transition, and needless to say, the end of this several year long conflict warranted excuses for students to be distracted from their classes, which the administration agreed to postpone. The library remained open, however.

It felt heartless, but for some reason Yashashi couldn't bring herself to face her returning family. She would see her mother's bag in the living room again, along with a pair of crutches. She tried to put it out of her mind. And, one morning she caught Shun in the bathroom washing his face, his arm wrapped in bandages and bare skin dotted with cuts and scars. She also could not bring herself to say hello, passing by the open door with forced absent-mindedness.

"Yasahashi-?" Shun had called, but she kept walking and was soon in the library.

The smell of Kimura's cigarette smoke was still absent from the house, but she wasn't going to think too hard about that either.

She had to study for her second year finals. It was a good excuse as any to tuck herself away in a quiet corner between the bookshelves. Takamaru was also there often. She noticed that the spines of the books he had piled up were about disaster relief. She watched him reading a one, sweat drizzling down his face in anxiety.

"Takamaru-san, the wars over. You're still worried about that type of thing?"

He jumped, having not heard her come by, "Oh! Yasahashi-san… " he closed his book, as if he was closing a box of jumping crickets, "You can never be too prepared."

"Right…"

"Yashashi, why are you here, though? Your family is back right? Is everyone alright?"

She didn't look up from her notebook. "Is your dad back yet?"

Takamaru noticed her deflection, but didn't prod. "Not yet," he said, "But, I was told his squad is said to be returning in a couple of days."

A couple days later, Yasahashi's own father returned in the middle of the night. The house came alive at his return. He woke Yasahashi up himself, gathering her up in a huge hug.

"Here's my future little urban planner, getting top scores and learning how to build buildings!" he cried, holding his tired, delirious daughter to his chest.

"Dad, what the hell," Yasa muttered.

After this, she had no excuse to leave for the library in the morning. Her dad made breakfast and in a sing-songy voice, brought the house together. He was in perfect health, except for some minor cuts and bruises and mild muscle strain. Her mother limped in on crutches, and Shun now wore an eyepatch which Yasahashi refused to look at. But, she couldn't stay quiet forever.

"I'm glad you're all back," she said. Chewing her breakfast, "I'm…sorry about your wounds."

Shun smiled, "Don't worry about it, sis."

But, she did worry about it. With her two eyes, she stared down at her own unharmed limbs.

"Where's Kimura?" Yasa asked.

"The hospital." her mother said, "He'll be there for the rest of the week."

"Let me do the dishes," Yasa stood, stopping her father from cleaning up the meal he had cooked. She wouldn't let any of them cook any meals after that, she did all the cooking. She brought them drinks and snacks. Her father absentmindedly made a comment about how the house had fallen to dissarray and needed to be cleaned. Yasa stopped him and made it her duty.

"Don't lift a finger, dad. I'll clean, it's my mess, after all." And she started to clean to house, too. Though he tried to stop her from cleaning it all herself, she would still do so behind his back. To her father's contentment, she was soon forced to stop as classes resumed.

Kimura's squad leader, a short muscular woman with rose-colored hair came by one evening. Her arm was in a sling. It was late at night, so Yasahashi was getting ready for bed, but she heard them talking down stairs in the kitchen.

"What happened to you all out in the field?" she heard her father ask.

"I would rather not go into detail, as it still gives me nightmares." The softspoken woman said, "I imagine he'll have those too."

Indeed, he did. When, Yashashi's older brother, Kimura, returned from the hospital, he had to take a deep sleep aid in order to prevent him from waking up screaming bloody murder in the night. He would accidentally skip a dosage here and there, and it always sent the house and neighbors into full alert mode when he woke them up with banshee noises.

The daytime was a different story.

"Can't believe you're still doing this pencil-pushing shit." He said one day when she came back from school. While she was taking her shoes off at the door, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted into her nostrils.

"What can't you believe about it?" she challenged him.

He was laying in the living room, back up against the wall with his legs splayed out and the TV on playing game shows. Yasahashi looked from him to the TV to the kitchen to the cigarette smoke, still clutching her back pack strap against her shoulder. No one else was home except for the two of them.

"You know what it's like to be out in the field, Yasahashi?"

This again.

"Know that the enemy is 10 yards behind ya and your legs are tired but you know if you stop running, you're going to get a shuriken in the neck and bleed out just like you did to another guy 10 minutes ago? Hey Yasahashi?"

She hurried passed him, storming up the stairs to her room.

"My weakling sister is wasting her time learning how to scribble on paper while everyone else is actually out there keeping the village safe," he called after her.

It was that stuff all the time. And it grated on her.

"Things are always in flux in this world," Professor Ayame's voice drifted above the tapping of his chalk on the board, "a felled tree allows rays to reach growths that might have not thrived under dense canopy. Whether that growth is good for the overall habitat… is sometimes questionable."

"Oiii, Ayame-sensei. We can't understand your plant metaphors."

"And on top of your accent…"

Yasahashi stared out the window past her professor's numerous ferns, watching two cats circle each other menacingly in the school courtyard. One looked scrappier and worse for wear, but the other had a dead mouse in it's mouth. After some hissing, the better-off cat dropped the mouse and jumped onto a window awning to escape.

"Koizuma," came her professor's voice. She snapped to attention. He looked at her expectantly.

"Can you repeat the question?" she asked, glaring at the man.

"No, and your attitude will earn you extra homework. Not that you seem to be doing that anymore."

There was a chorus of oooooooo's from her classmates.

Yasahashi got up from her desk and climbed out the window, tearing through some of Professor Ayame's ferns. She made a full ninja's exist. The students in class whispered and laughed nervously.

"All the ninja are back from the war, and so is Koizuma," they were saying.

Professor Ayame continued class as if nothing had happened. But, when the day was over and all the rest of the students had left, he stared in contemplation at the once astute and promising student's empty desk next to the window. He attended to the torn and trampled ferns she had mistreated in her escape.

"Is the war really over?" He whispered to the ferns.


The Hokage asked Yasahashi if she could check on Naruto now and then. She already had started keeping an eye on the boy, tutoring him on his taijutsu on the apartment roof sometimes, though, the kid had the attention span of a fly, so their sessions never lasted long. Atleast she finally got him to stop calling her sensei.

"I prefer Aunty." Yasahashi said. Kaeda had suggested it as a joke. She couldn't wait to see the look on Kaeda's face the next time she heard Naruto actually call her that.

"Aunty-Yasa, Aunty-Yasa—" Naruto chided.

A year passed by quickly, as Yasahashi finished studying Professor Ayame's designs and started copying them again, this time with her own embellishments. "It'd be no good if I passed your work off as my own, after all…" she muttered to herself.

The office of the Konoha Civil Engineering Department whirred through her mornings and afternoons. The roads of Konoha stretched beneath her, too and from.

"I failed the exam again! I have to get better!" Naruto yelled one evening, running past Yasa in the stairwell.

"Oh yeah, that was today, wasn't it?"

She could see his face was wet. A couple seconds later he passed her again, carrying his backpack full of kunai and tools.

"Where are you going, Naruto?"

"Sorry Aunty-Yasa, I'm going to practice all night! If I can't master this jutsu by morning, then I'll never become a ninja!"

Yasahashi looked after him with concern, "Hey, don't- don't stay out to late, kid." She called after, but he was gone.


Young Yasahashi, with disjointed dreams and expectations, approached a buzzing fluorescent kiosk in the woods. Inside, there was a woman wearing a chunin uniform with her leg in a cast and propped up on the desk in front of her. She was reading a book. As Yasahashi knocked on the window, the book cover fell a little bit, revealing that it was a naughty book in disguise. The woman didn't seem to notice and layed the book on the table with it's spine open to keep it's place.

"Can I help you?"

"I'd like to go in and train, please."

"Can I see your ID?"

Yasahashi looked to the side, "I left it at home."

"Sorry, kid. I can't let just anyone go in and use the training grounds without proof of ninja credentials."

"I really need to practice for my graduation exam. It's tomorrow, you know. I just want to get one last session in tonight."

The woman looked at her sympathetically. "Okay," she slid a clipboard underneath the glass and Yasahashi scribbled her name on the paper. The woman took the clipboard back and glanced down at the name, "Okay, Kaeda Morimoto, good luck with your exams."

She disappeared into the woods.

"Huh, she looked kind of old to still be in the academy." The woman said to herself. She tried to move to get another look at Yasahashi, but winced as her leg gave her pain. She shrugged, then picked up her book again and started reading with a cheesy grin.

Yasahashi knew that she had gone a little overboard. She hadn't come out here since before she failed her graduation exam for the last time and was severely out of practice. She had rigged traps, though improperly, and practiced dodging projectiles, only to receive minor cuts and bruises. She exhausted herself silly, raging as she tried to mold chakra and felt no different than before.

She would have continued until morning, or until exhaustion set in and she collapsed in the woods, but she heard the sound of others nearby and got spooked. With wavering energy, she hid quickly behind some bushes, just as two adults came crashing through the clearing.

They were laughing and giggling, and as soon as one stopped, the other came up to them and grabbed them by the waist. They started making out up against the training stump. Yasahashi blushed. After getting severely grossed out, she took her chances of being caught and ran away, likely making her presence known to the ninja.

"Oh shit, who's there?"

"Crap, were we seen?"

They didn't seem that concerned by her sloppy rustling through the woods and didn't pursue her, or she couldn't tell if they did. As she sped out of the training grounds and passed the checkpoint, she couldn't help but question the gender of those two people. She swore both their voices were deep and masculine.

A sharp pain travelled up her joints from her calf. As she landed on that leg, she winced and lost her footing on the roof she ran across. She tumbled to the ground into a narrow alleyway and landed on the concrete.

She was frozen on the ground in shock, asphault digging into her bare limbs, trying to get her wits about her. As she slowly edged herself up onto her hands and knees, she realized she didn't quite know where she was. There was a loud booming noise coming from somewhere, like a repetitive dance beat. There were others in the alleyway, the sound of heels clacking and laughter. She stared at the distant strangers cautiously as she sat up on the gritty concrete, but they payed her no attention.

She touched her calf and felt warm, red blood and cursed to herself. She remembered feeling like she pulled something while she was training, looks like she had just made matters worse. Now she was hurt. Now she'll upset her dad, and Kimura will never let her live it down.

Why had she tried? Why did she even think she could still be a ninja?

The bass beat intensified briefly as the hinge of a door creaked open a few feet away from her. She heard a honey-dipped voice.

"You need some help, sweetie?"

Yasahashi looked up and saw an angel. Her heart beat, and she stared in awe at this beautiful person, who smiled sweetly with tired, big eyelashes, leaning on a door frame. A similar person came through with competing beauty. Yasahashi blushed again. It was almost like she'd forgotten the reason she was crying.

One of them kneeled down by her, "Aww, poor lil ninja kid hurt her leg. Miss Hanabi will fix ya up, come on now." She gestured for Yasa to come inside the dark lit, loud room which smelled like smoke. Above the entrance there was a sign that read, "Hanabi's" with a blue butterfly on it. Yasa couldn't help thinking of her brother's cigarette smoke and didn't want to go in.

She tried to get up to leave, but was frozen.

"Rizzu-chan, can't you see she's scared? They don't teach about folks like us in the academy, right?" the other one winked at her.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll just bring Lady Hanabi out here, then."

The angel vanished into the pit of hell and Yasa realized she had been staring at the other woman, who then giggled, "While it's rude to stare, queens like me actually WANT people to stare at them, so this is fine, hehe."

Yasahashi looked down in embarrassment. Her eyes wandered down the alleyway, resting on a strange corner, of corners which she didn't expect to exist. She laughed internally, thinking that Professor Ayame would have something to say about such an absurd building.

As she was musing about the strange structure, another large, beautiful woman with a sparkling, glittery dress ascended from the portal. She was talking to herself: "Oh, now what's going on? An injured ninja kid, 'an injured ninja kid, an injured ninja kid…' that's all she says then goes back off to the bar," the woman clicked her tongue. She looked at the other queen, who gestured to Yasahashi, who was beginning to feel faint from the blood loss.

"Oh!" The new queen said in alarm, noticing her finally. Yasa stared up at her, completely shocked by the woman's stunning beauty again. She looked sympathetic, "Are you alright, young one? My name's Miss Hanabi. I'm a queen by night, a medical ninja by day. I can fix ya right up, real quick, if you'll let me."

Miss Hanabi healed her calf effectively, Yasa didn't even feel a twinge of pain as the blue-green glow enveloped her leg.

As soon as her leg was healed, she thanked the two Queens briefly and left. They both waved goodbye while doing this mysterious jutsu involving a poof of glitter and Yasa would find it in the oddest places around her house for weeks to come.


Howdy Pals, it's Kakashi's Prius here. Now, you see Kakashi drives lyft in his free time, and even though it was a month ago, we're still finding glitter in my seats. So, mind your butt when you get out, unless you want a glittery a**!